Slitherine

TL;DR - need a program for deployment mock-ups.

What I am looking for is a simple program that you can drag/drop or cut/paste shapes that could serve to practice deployment, analyze an army's frontage, etc. You can learn a lot about an army list by laying it out on the table, but a computerized version would be really helpful.

I played around with Excel for this, but it's not working out. I can set a grid that approximates a 4'x8' table and set the entry fields to 40mm x 5mm. Then I prepackage some units to C&P onto the board. This works OK for frontage, but you cannot drop in terrain features very well, and it is pretty clunky.

Can anyone recommend a cheap/free program that might accommodate this without a bunch of CAD skills? Something that lets you create basic shapes (the table, units, terrain) and play with them would be awesome. For instance, those of you that include diagrams in your rules questions might be using something that will work for this.

Any ideas?

Spike

Try the Battle Chronicler:

http://www.battlechronicler.com/downloa ... adv08.html

It's free and I found it fairly easy to learn how to use.

spikemesq wrote:TL;DR - need a program for deployment mock-ups.

Are you saying your own post is too long so nobody should read it?

shadowdragon wrote:Try the Battle Chronicler:

http://www.battlechronicler.com/downloa ... adv08.html

It's free and I found it fairly easy to learn how to use.

Its awesome - almost too good to be true.

I checked out BattleChronicler, but it won't work at the office. Will check it out at home.

What program do people use to generate those images I see in so many rules question posts?

I always use word, then convert to bitmap, or smileys. But that won't help you at all. Though I don't suppose I ever have Spike.






=Spike's poor LF questions
=My drilled, superior, cruel answers riding them down


=Elite Friday Knight drinking

I use a CAD program (Autosketch) that I got years ago from a CD that came with a computer magazine. It wouldn't surprise me if you can pick up old versions of this quite cheaply on ebay or somewhere.
It has the advantage that you can specify dimensions and angles. It's not difficult to use.

You might be able to get close to what you want with powerpoint.

There used to be a toy called "Fuzzy Felt" that would probably do the job admirably without the aid of a computer.

I use Powerpoint, you can preset all of your shapes and then just copy/paste and move them onto a new slide, kind lof like electronic fuzzy felt. And it should be OK at work!